One of the most underutilized tools in influencer marketing is, without a doubt, searching for influencers by keyword. Yes, most Grapeviners use it, but they get about 10% of the potential value out of it.

Why is this? Because most influencer marketing professionals are used to more simple tag-based search functionality where you select 1 of only ~20 high level tags (like “fashion” or “technology”) and all the influencers who self-selected those tags pop up. Is it easy? Yup. Is it effective? Not really—it’s very susceptible to irrelevant tag spam and is heavily limited by the fixed set of tags you can search.

What is keyword searching?

Keyword searching is how Grapevine’s search functionality works. In short, it searches through the post titles, post descriptions, and account bios of every influencer in our network for the keywords you type in. Results are then prioritized by how relevant the influencers’ keywords use is.

So if you type in “mascara”, Grapevine will show the influencers that mention “mascara” in one of their post titles:

video descriptions:

or influencer bios:

If you type in multiple keywords, it will search for results that contain all keywords. So if you search “mom fashion” it will include influencers who mention “mom” and “fashion”.

Another staple of keyword searching is word exclusion, which removes all results containing a particular keyword. This can be done by typing a minus sign (“-”) before any keyword. For example, if you typed “-television”, all influencers who use the keyword “television” will be excluded.

Finally, you can string together as many keywords/keyword exclusions as you like! Although, you’ll rarely need more than five.

How do you pick the right keywords?

Picking the right keywords to find the best fit influencers can feel like a bit of an art at times. But in the end, it all comes down to one key guideline: Search for the keywords that you think influencers in the right niche will use in their posts, not necessarily the keywords that describe the niche.

Want to find tech influencers? Don’t just type in “tech” or “electronics” because people in many niches talk about those subjects sometimes (it’s impossible to avoid tech nowadays). Run searches like “tech setup” because only tech influencers often talk about their “setups” (ex. the computer, speakers, mouse, etc. they use). The key is to find a word or combination of words that are unique to the niche you’re looking for.

Another approach to finding tech influencers could be to use word exclusion. The issue with just typing in “tech” is that many other niches might mention this word. So subtract those niches! Something like “tech -fashion -prank -beauty -cooking” would likely work quite well.

Finally, remember to not just rely on one search! You’ll want to use multiple search strategies because each one will bring up different influencers.

Wrapping up

Grapevine’s search functionality looks through the post titles, post descriptions, and account bios of every influencer in our network for the specific keywords you put in. If you put a minus sign before a keyword, all results with that word will be excluded!

The key to picking the right keywords and word exclusions is thinking about what unique words/word combinations influencers will/will not use in their posts, not necessarily the words that describe the niche.

These are just guidelines though. The best keyword search ninjas get really creative with the search terms they use, so you should too. And it’s worth it – finding a set of clever keywords to pull up the perfect influencers is a very satisfying feeling 🙂